Was Jesus a Healer?

I was about a year or two into dating Ellis, my husband, that I discovered my favorite role in a wedding. I’ve spent a number of times, a number of weddings, as a groomsman. I was a priest, a very new priest, but I’d been the officiant for a number of weddings. I discovered the first time that Ellis and I went to the wedding of one of his friends from college, that my favorite role is to be Ellis Anderson’s date.

When I’m not the priest, not the groomsmen, I love it because the pressure is off. All I have to do is be sort of vaguely charming and funny and helpful. I don’t have any real responsibilities.

We were on our way to the wedding. in Chicago, and we were driving through the city and I remember we stopped at a red light. Chicago is an old city with funny streets and this street didn’t go through. There was a business right in front of us at the light, in one of those old Chicago brick buildings lots of brick and small little storefront. It was a clinic. And on the clinic was the name “Resurrection Healthcare.” And I thought, well that’s setting the bar a little high.

Jesus the Healer?

Today we find Jesus at work healing. Jesus’ healing ministry is not without stickiness. Healing is sort of a tricky question for Christians. Because if Jesus had come primarily as a healer, there would probably still be a Jesus hospital network based in Capernaum, right? But that’s not where Jesus leaves us today, and this story in particular is not without its problems.

I saw a number of eyebrows go up. When Jesus raised up Simon’s mother in law, and immediately she began serving them.

I wonder whether this story is shared, because this is a moment in Jesus ministry that made Jesus uncomfortable. I found myself as I thought about this story this week, wondering whether Jesus had this moment in mind, when he spoke with Mary and Martha later in the Gospels.

Jesus had to tell Martha not to worry about her sister not helping with the dishes, not helping in the kitchen. She was at the feet of the rabbi, and she had chosen the better part. I wonder whether Jesus was uncomfortable in this moment, because the crowd of need was pressing in, and he didn’t have time to stop Simon, to stop his mother in law and say, “I didn’t come so that she might immediately get up and serve us. My healing is not about restoring the social order, but flipping it on its head.”

But it was a busy moment that Jesus found himself in. We read in the next chapter that as Jesus has gone on to the next town, the crowds have again heard of his healing. They’re pressing in so greatly that in the town In the house where Jesus is staying, some neighbors climb up and cut a hole in the roof and lower their friend down to jump the queue and get to the healer. You get a sense of the pressure that is in these verses, don’t you? Today we encounter Jesus under pressure.

The Best Prayer for a Sick Person

I’ve been asked more than once as a priest what I think of healing, whether I believe in miraculous healings. And my response is very Episcopalian. It depends. If by do you believe in miraculous healing you are asking whether I think that you should swear off modern medicine, come here to church and receive a prayer instead of state of the art medical care, then no.

I absolutely do not believe in that sort of anti science idea of faith. But, if whethering, wondering whether I think prayer can have a benefit? I say just as firmly, yes. Prayer may not change a diagnosis, but prayer can still bring healing, especially when we find prayers that aren’t attached to particular outcomes.

Often the best prayer we can pray for a sick person is just to show up to hold somebody’s hand, or to assure them that you’ll feed their cat while they’re in the hospital. Often the best prayer in the face of sickness is not some blase assurance that it’ll all just be fine, but rather to say, I’m here with you.

Sometimes the best prayer is just to be present, to be loving, to be accepting of the situation at hand.

Jesus, after all this busy healing, you notice, heads out to pray. And his prayer, it leads him somewhere we might expect, might not expect. His disciples come hunting for him. There’s a word choice. “Hunting.” And they find him, and Jesus says, let us go on from here. Let us proclaim the message in more towns, for that is what I’ve come to do. Jesus is, it turns out, not primarily a healer.

All Healing is Temporary

There is a difficult truth, a difficult biblical truth about healing. Even the most miraculous healing in the Bible is temporary. Think about it. Lazarus, who Jesus raises from the dead, do we know what happens to Lazarus? Tradition has it that he lived for another 30 years. Our Orthodox siblings say that he was a bishop on Cyprus. Poor Lazarus.

But Lazarus lives another thirty years, and then dies, and is buried a second time. No miraculous healing story is the final story. Which may be why Jesus last words to his disciples don’t tend to be about healing. Jesus does not say to them, you will be my nurses, you will be my physician’s assistants.

Jesus says, you will be my witnesses. Witnesses. Witnesses. Jesus isn’t primarily a healer. The healing stories are meant to point us to something deeper. To the message Jesus was sent to proclaim. Healing, physical healing is a momentary disclosure. A passing sign of the deeper healing to come. As a church, I believe we are meant to be a place of healing.

I’m not advocating that we get into the healthcare market. That seems way too complicated to me. But even without a clinic, as a church, I believe that we are meant to be a place that helps heal the wounds of our society, of our religion. We’re meant to be a place where people who are divided from one another by age or income, by politics, by race, gender, sexual orientation. And where they can come together, can find common ground. We’re meant to hold small groups, Bible studies, prayer groups, intentional communities, where we share life with those with whom we might not easily share space outside the church context.

A Community of Practice

We are a community of practice. We come to practice this sort of healing.We come together to practice loving one another across all that divides. We come to break bread together even when we disagree with one another. We share peace even with those with whom we struggle. We come together to practice healing so that out in our workplaces, out in our schools, out in our communities, our streets, we can reach across divisions with hope.

We can reach out to those we struggle to love. We can reach out to those who are disenfranchised, demonized, or forgotten. We come to practice a healing. that has the power to transform not just our lives, but the whole of the community. Jesus came not primarily to heal bodies, but to heal the whole of society.

He came to heal by proclaiming a message of subversive hope. We, as Christians, are primarily a people of hope. As the contemplative teacher and black theologian Barbara Holmes puts it, We are a people who, “despite all evidence to the contrary… insist on seeing our current state of affairs as the rupture of one state of being that will prepare us for another reality.”

In a world of bitter division, those divisions are only gonna get starker this year. We proclaim hope, hope that people can come together for the common good. In a world of warring factions and opportunistic politicians, hope that we can set aside egos and agendas and really listen to one another. In the face of climate disaster, hope that we might come together to learn to live sustainably on this planet. We are a people of hope that even though all of us one day will likely face illness, We’ll surely face death, but death does not have the final word. We are a people of subversive hope because we believe God has the final word. Over every system, government, even over death itself, God has the final word. God’s final word is love. Christians are a people of hope.

Now, being a people of hope, it doesn’t mean that we’re always supposed to put on smiley faces. It’s not about putting on your Sunday best and polishing your shoes. Hope is not about appearances. Church is a place where you can bring whatever you’re feeling, your frustrations. Church is a place where you can cry. I had a parishioner once who, after her husband died, came to church and cried for a whole year. And God blessed that church because they just kept telling her, “Don’t be embarrassed. Come. Let us hug you if that’s what you want. Let us sit with you. Because if you can’t cry in church, where can you cry?” Hope sometimes looks like coming for a good cry together.

Doing the Deeper Work of Hope

Being a people of hope doesn’t mean that we aren’t pragmatic. As Gandhi said often, “to a hungry person God has no business appearing in any form, except as bread.” There are times when we are called to get directly involved, to help our neighbor. But as a church, as followers of Jesus, we also must do that internal work. So whether you’re an early morning person like Jesus or not, we take time to pray and discern how our action is part of our deeper work, our work of witness. We witness that subversive hope we call the gospel, the good news, that all suffering is temporary, that God’s love will heal.

It’s hard sometimes to hold this perspective, isn’t it? At least for me, I like to be involved in the action. I like to be a fixer. I like practical solutions. But when it comes to the big questions. Like illness and suffering, I often have to let go of my need to fix. I have to slow down and focus on the relationships. Because only when our work connects us deeply to one another, to God, and to Christ’s world changing message of hope can we dare to call it Christian.

The resurrection I maintain is a high bar for a healthcare company. But not for a church. We believe Christ overcame the worst of human suffering, the worst that people can do to one another.

The resurrection tells us, as Desmond Tutu put it, that “goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, life is stronger than death,” even in a world where that doesn’t always appear to be the case. We are a resurrection people, looking for ways to witness to the hope that we have been given. We are a resurrection people holding on to that hope despite all the pain and suffering in our world, despite all we face in our lives, we are bound together. We go on together because our primary work is to be witnesses of a deeper hope. Amen.